Unbearable Likeness of Being
by luckness
Summary: When Katniss exits the arena, she is seemingly calm and she doesn't know why. The people around her leave maybe Effie are acting strange. Haymitch is keeping things from her, and Cinna is keeping oddly quiet. But when at a ball she snaps and is escorted out, she will meet a like creature, who has been kept in the dark since winning last year. And the girl on fire will erupt.


**Katniss:**

"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Katniss Everdeen, the victor of the 74th Hunger Games"

From behind the synthetic skies of the arena, the cheers and deluded joy of the Capitol could be heard almost clearly. Hovercrafts landed in the equally fake grass and peacekeepers filed out, surrounding the grey-eyed girl who's life had just been spared in the heroic feat of a boy who believed she loved him.

She did not love him.

She assumed that they had been trying to get her to walk herself into the hovercraft, for the peacekeeper who now stood in front of her gave an irritated huff before stooping to hoist her over his shoulder.

On the hovercraft she sat motionless as she waited for its metal feet to touch the ground, yearning for the feeling of the real world around her and the real sky above her.

The whole craft lurched a little when it made contact with the Capitol pavement and it sent a few unprepared peacekeepers falling into each other. The hatch opened and before the ramp had even hit the ground, Katniss had quickly unbuckled and pushed through the fumbling peacekeepers to run out into the world. Standing in the opening, she scanned the crowd that awaited her for only a second before spying Haymitch and running to his embrace.

"Good job, Sweetheart" he said less gruffly than she remembered him being.

Letting go, he walked her to a bright and expensive looking car, that must have had something to do with Effie, that took them back to the complex where she and the other tributes had lived before entering the arena.

* * *

Entering the building was somehow less detrimental to her calm than she had thought it would be. The walls and furniture had been moved around and changed, and the building—though just as plush as she remembered—barely bore a likeness to the uninviting modern-style it had had before. Of course, she wouldn't complain there. It meant less to make her remember Rue, or Peeta, or the rest of them. No matter how calm she was at the moment, she knew that she wouldn't have been able to handle that kind of reminiscent setting.

Katniss stood in the round foyer of the building and looked around at where she would call home for the remainder of her stay in the silly city.

"Congratulations Katniss!" a voice squealed from behind her.

Had she had more than the few hurried clicks of Effie's too-tall heels as warning of her approach, Katniss was sure that she could have dodged this assault on her personal space, however there she stood, enveloped in an appropriately too-tight hug that made her lungs contract in a painful sort of way.

"Effie! Get off of the girl!" Haymitch, who had just walked in the door, yelled at the woman whose arms still had Katniss locked in a vice-like grip. Effie let go of her begrudgingly and proceeded to yell back at the scruffy looking man.

Katniss watched bemusedly as a mini-argument erupted between the two. They seemed somewhat friendlier now, though, than they had before she had entered the arena. Or maybe that was just relative, seeing as she had just emerged from a few-week-long battle to the death; anything could seem kinder after living in that kind of cruelty, she supposed.

"I'm going to go to sleep," Katniss said, not really trying to be heard over the now escalating display of animosity between her mentor and a very red faced Effie.

"Of course, dear. I'll show you where your room is," said Effie, whose face was masked in a false sort of serenity as she turned away from Haymitch.

With a nod from Katniss, Effie stood and straightened out her wig before leading the way up the stairs, leaving Haymitch seething in the foyer.

Effie fit in more of a conversation than Katniss would have thought possible on the short trip to her bedroom, though Katniss knew she really shouldn't be surprised; it seemed that the Capitol and its people had a knack for filling time with general uselessness and petty dramas.

The two reached what Katniss assumed was her door, just as Effie was getting into a detailed description of "just the most ravishing" cake she had had just a few days before. Opening the door and stepping in, Katniss scanned the room—a habit that she must have picked up in the Games. If the rest of the building was much too different from what she remembered, then this room was much too similar to what she remembered.

An onslaught of memories cascaded over her as she took in the familiar bad, chairs and view that had greeted her when she was just fresh off the train from District 12.

Katniss closed the door on Effie's tirade against the horrific job done by her new makeup artist (something she noted that she would be hearing about later) and took two long steps across the room to the bed.

Lying where she had fallen into the soft sheets and pillows, Katniss curled into herself and lost her calm.

* * *

Katniss awoke to a voice shouting from behind her door. She peeled back the heavy blankets and swung her legs over the side of the bed, stumbling over to the door in a half-conscious daze. Heavily, she lifted a hand to the know and peeked out into the hallway, only to be greeted with the sight of a wall and an otherwise quite empty hall. The shouting continued, however, as she reeled in her grogginess, trying confusedly to find the source of the shouts.

Walking out into the cold hallway, Katniss tip-toed to the next room over, pressing her ear to the door just as it was swung open, the scent of heavy alcohol wafting through the air. Startled, Katniss stumbled backward a few steps before looking up into the face of her mentor.

"Whadda ya need, Sweetheart?" Haymitch asked, his breath suspiciously void of its usual stench of stale alcohol.

She tried to peek around him to get a glimpse of whoever must have been in the room with him, but he shifted to block her gaze and her eyes snapped back to his.

"Who are you yelling at?"

"I don't see that that involves you, does it, princess?" Haymitch said more gruffly.

Katniss frowned slightly at him before trying again to look around him. She got a brief glimpse of blonde hair before her view was agin blocked by Haymitch who told her that Effie had been asking for her, and to go down stairs before slamming the door in her face.

The shouting began again, but this time a just bit quieter.

With a grimace and the remaining confusion over what had just happened, Katniss trekked down the many flights of stairs to the kitchen where Effie say with a man dressed too simply to be one of 'her.' Effie's gaze fell on her as she entered the room and he flashed her a wide grin. The man who sat with her turned around as well. He had dark hair and eyes rimmed in gold, and he looked at her with a familiarity that was easy to place.

"Cinna!" Katniss breathed as she rushed to the man, locking him in a friendly embrace.

Letting him go and looking into his face, she could tell that he wasn't there simply to express his cordial congratulations. There was something else going on.

"What is it?" she asked, furrowing her eyebrows in worry.

"There is going to be a victor's ball at President Snow's mansion tonight. In you honour, of course!" Effie squealed excitedly.

Katniss could tell that she couldn't wait to sell off her part in the 'District 12' underdog glory story to the rest of her peers. Cinna however, simply looked at her with a silent sympathy that worried her even further. Though never as flamboyant as the rest of her styling team, Cinna was never one to let a potential conflict like this ball arise without giving his ten cents of comfort. He stayed silent, however as Effie told her to go upstairs to her closet where she would find her dress for the event.

Walking up the stairs once again, Katniss couldn't shake the feeling that there was something big that she was missing.


End file.
